by Cara Wall
At Marcus and Annelise’s wedding he and James would say, We have gathered here today to join two people. But they were already gathered and joined, he thought, all of them made useful together, like the mechanisms of a clock. These few people, here in this church, were the gears and switches in his life, the tiny metal pegs that made it turn. If he opened any hinged door in a shadowed room, one of these people would be there.
He performed the service. He asked Nan and James if they wanted their child to be raised in the church; he asked the small congregation if they would support Lola in her faith. They said yes. He scooped water from the font and tipped it onto Lola’s head; her blue eyes opened in surprise. He felt, suddenly, the overwhelming need to speak, not as a figurehead or a channel for the word of God, not as a minister—only as a man.
“James and Nan,” he said. They smiled. “You have given me the gift of speaking at this very special occasion, and I will try to make it worth your while. I have been thinking of what I might tell Lola about life, but since she won’t understand any of it, I will tell the rest of you what I have come to understand.”
Charles paused for a moment, and cleared his throat, as he put his thoughts in order. He was not sure they were entirely true, but they felt true to him in that moment, and he was tired of thinking too hard, tired of talking himself out of things he believed.
“There are three kinds of trials in life,” he said, relishing the simplicity of the idea. He heard his voice grow stronger, stood straight to accommodate it. “There are the trials God gives you,” he continued, “which almost always lead to wisdom, and so are worth the trouble. There are the trials you force upon yourself, which should be abandoned at their onset.” He nodded to show them that he realized he was speaking about himself. “And there are the trials we create for one another,” he continued, “which are more complicated because it is impossible to know whose hand is guiding them.
“The only advice I can give anyone is this,” he said. “Don’t ever shrink from those last trials. Run to them. Because only in the quality of your struggle with one another will you learn anything about yourself. Sometimes that struggle is nearly impossible to survive, but it is those trials which make a life.”
When he was finished, Nan and James hugged him, and Nan’s father shook his hand. Lily looped her arm through his, and they followed Annelise as she guided Will and Bip out to the church steps, where the little party had decided to take a picture. Annelise ran to the gate and flagged down a woman passing by. As the woman held up the camera, and they stepped closer together, Charles knew all was not well. All was not well, all would never be well; but all was not lost. Charles put a hand lightly on Will’s shoulder and Will did not pull away. The day was warm, his wife was cheerful, his friends finally had their child. The shutter clicked. The dogwood and apple trees had suddenly thrown down the confetti of their new year.
EPILOGUE
On the day Charles died, Lily pulled one of her white kitchen chairs up to the window that faced the garden. It was barely dawn. She had found Charles slumped over his desk, still dressed in a blue oxford cloth shirt, his head on the green felt blotter at such an angle that she could not question what had happened. Still, she said “Charles?” into the silent room. She stood next to him, in her nightgown, for a long time. It would be the last moment she would have with him, so she took in everything: the plaid curtains, the leather chairs, the books on the shelves behind him, the fireplace, the nape of his neck. What a relief, she thought, for him to die in the privacy of their own home, on a night they had spent together, so she did not have to stand again, cold and astonished, in the green-lit hall of a hospital. She put her hand lightly on Charles’s back. Then she walked into the kitchen and telephoned James.
“Don’t bring Nan,” she said.
James arrived as the ambulance pulled up, bounded up the steps before the men with the stretcher could pass him, cheeks red, hair disheveled.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Lily nodded. Death was not a mystery to her, this time. Soon, there would be grief. She recognized the dull, electric imminence of its hurricane off the shore. Her nights would be full of wind and darkness. But she was well rehearsed, and her boat was stronger now; her sail and rudder would hold.
And Charles’s death was not a tragedy. They’d had fifty years together, decades of parks and bicycles, soccer fields and swimming pools, school meetings and city petitions, a house cobwebbed with worry and swept clean by relief. He had seen his children grow up. He had preached and preached again, grown both more impatient with the world and more compassionate. He had stooped and shuffled; she had grown even more thin and angled. For their fiftieth anniversary, she had given him a hat with flaps to keep his ears warm, a luxury he would never allow himself. But, despite his bowed shoulders, he had remained taller than everyone, at the mercy of buffeting wind, and she had not wanted him to suffer. He had given her fifty boxes of tea. Now, they would be the tally of days she would live without him, the last one a marker at the end of the paved road from which she would have to step alone onto an untamped path.
The stretcher creaked and clicked. There was a sound like snow falling from a roof as they laid Charles’s weight on it. James came out of the study and held her hand.
“They’ll take him out now,” he said. “Do you want to see him?” Lily shook her head. She wanted to remember Charles’s face as it had been in life. She went back into the kitchen and sat down on the white chair. The sun was up, dew beading on the garden’s small batch of grass.
Charles had been dead five hours. Any minute now Nan would arrive. She would bring cinnamon rolls, and grapes, and coffee in a blue deli cup. She would bring a casserole and fruit salad, crackers and cheese, bottles of juice and milk. It would feel like too much, a bounty when Lily felt most bare, but it would be just enough to feed Bip and Will, when they arrived, and Bip’s wife, Laura, and Marcus and Annelise. Nan would pack it all in separate containers, because Will did not like different foods to touch, and she would bring fresh white bread and soft butter, because they were all Will would eat when he was sad. Who else but Nan would think of all that?
Nan would organize everything. She would choose the hymns and the flowers; she would stand next to Lily on the church steps as they greeted guests before the service. There would be hundreds; the church would be full. Will would pace the long, cracked aisle, as tall as Charles had been, and bearded, but still making figure eights with his hands and pulling at his hair. Nan would make certain that no one asked him to sit down. She would hold Lily’s hand while James gave his eulogy, and Lily would let her. Lily would be her best self for as long as it took everyone around her to let Charles go.
And then she would move to the Vineyard. After Charles’s parents had died, she and Charles had bought a house there, close to his cousins. She could have dinner with them, sometimes, and walk on the beach every day. Bip and Will lived together in Boston; she could visit them on weekends, drive Will to his job at the small company that made Shaker boxes: delicate oval catchalls for rings and extra buttons. Charles had put a pair of them on each of his desks; Lily thought them a perfect reflection of the love he had found for his son, practical and fragile, sentimental and searching, willing to be empty or filled. It made her light-headed to think about it.
The Vineyard house was too big for her; she would be lonely, but she wanted to look out at the water and know Charles had seen the same view, so she would live there, adding on to a life he had known. Nan and James would visit her for long summer stays. There would be lobsters and bonfires and wool blankets wrapped around their knees on cool nights. It would not be the same, but it would be familiar.
Nan’s loud knock on the door broke the silence. Lily took a sharp breath. Charles had not left her alone, she realized. The thought was a surprise. She and Nan and James had lost him, but not one another. He had worked on them all carefully, every day, bending and shaping, folding and binding, so that if he went first, they wo
uld not be adrift; they would be inextricably linked, these people who had known him longest and best. How she loved him, she thought—how improbably—for ensuring these friends would forever be her stitches, her scaffold, her ballast, her home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the true joys of finishing this book is that I finally get to publicly acknowledge all the people who advised, encouraged, and sustained me for the many years it took to write it. Everyone on this page believed I could publish this book even when I was ready to give up. I am humbled to thank:
Wendy Levinson, my astounding agent, for championing this book with her rare combination of tenacity and grace. Marysue Rucci, my gifted editor, who polished this story until it shone. The rest of the Simon and Schuster team, for their overwhelming warmth, support, and advocacy: Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Cary Goldstein, Elizabeth Breeden, Samantha O’Hara, Jackie Seow, David Litman, Ruth Lee-Mui, Jonathan Evans, Dominick Montalto, Allison Har-Zvi, Lana Roff, and especially Zachary Knoll, for answering my many questions. My earliest readers: Laura Murawczyk, Jack Livings, Kristina Loverro, Mariko Tada, Lydia Snape, and Alix Ford, for critiquing with kindness. My later readers: Lewis Buzbee and Jan Geniesse, for helping me understand my characters in a deeper way. The Reverends Will Critzman and Gina Gore, for sharing their experiences of ministry. The BBBW: Catherine Anderson, Jan Brown, Alix Ford, Leah Guggenheimer, Lara Rosenthal, Lydia Snape, Darnley Stewart, Mariko Tada, and Sandra Weathers Smith, for almost twenty years of book club and never doubting I would get this done. Anne Wall, Jan Geniesse, and Julianne Mulvey, for parenting my child as if she were your own—and me, too, when I needed it. For Deborah Claymon, Christina Hall, Jennifer Huber, Kristina Loverro, and Lydia Snape—the gratitude I have for you could fill another book. My partner, Alfred Culliford, who puts up with my mess, tells excellent jokes, and challenges me to be my best self. Grayson Culliford, who adds her special laugh and lightness to my life. And finally, Eleanor Livings: I wrote the first draft of this book while I was waiting for you to be born, and I finished it so you would be proud of me. You are my truest inspiration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© KEN HAMM
CARA WALL grew up in Greenwich Village. She attended Stanford University and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she helped establish and then directed the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Her work has been published in SF Gate, Glamour, and Salon. After wandering the world, she once again lives in New York City with her family.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Cara Wall
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2019
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ISBN 978-1-9821-0454-2 (ebook)